Hi to all,

I'm on freshly dist-upgrade Debian unstable, kernel 2.6.14, kde 3.5 using hal, dbus and pmount.

Since my last dist-upgrade, I'm experiencing this minor but boring problem: everything works well with hal, i.e. it recognizes automaticaly usb keys, inserted CDs, etc., but it doesn't recognize that my root partition ( /dev/hda2 ), is mounted! This root partition is showned by the media:/ protocol in Konqueror and in the hal-device-manager, but like if it was an unmounted drive. If i try to mount it, I get this error message:

mount: /dev/hda2 is already mounted or / is busy
mount: according to mtab /dev/hda2 is already mounted on /

I have a Win XP partition (/dev/hda1) that I can mount without a problem.

Here's my fstab file:

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem mountpoint type options dump pass
/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
#/dev/fd0 /floppy vfat defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devmode=0666 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 defaults,ro,users,noexec,noauto 0 0
#/dev/dvd /dvd iso9660 defaults,ro,users,noexec,noauto 0 0
#/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbsda1 auto defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1 ntfs noauto,users,exec,ro,umask=000 0 0
/dev/hda3 none swap defaults 0 0


Also, I have this line in my mtab file:

/dev/hda2 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0



Someone has an idea on what's going on?

Thanks in advance for your help.

What makes you thinks that "it doesn't recognize that my root partition ( /dev/hda2 ), is mounted"? Does it show any errros messages, etc. ?

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

I've solved the problem, which was related to a devfs thing that I don't understand completely, but anyway, here's my story:

The way I figure it out is that when I was booting with my 2.6.14 custom kernel, I was getting a "mount: unknown filesystem type 'devfs'" error message and I was experiencing the problem for which I started this post, i.e. not being able to access my root partition through hal. However, when I was using the Debian 2.6.14 vanilla kernel, everything worked well. After some googling, I've found that devfs is no longer supported in kernel>= 2.6.13, but that if you make your initrd image with mkinitrd, it will still try to 'include' devfs and then, it will produce the devfs error message at boot time and the hal problem. If you use yaird to make your initrd image, you won't have this problem... That's what I've done and everything works well now.

Hope this will help someone.

Marco

Well, I thought that everything was working well, but I have discovered that if I use an initrd.img created with yaird, the swsusp (hibernation) function is not working anymore. I've also tried with initramfs-tools, and swsusp is almost working... but the system can't resume....

Now, I'm wondering how to make an initrd.img (with mkinitrd, yaird or initramfs) that would work well with

- udev, hal and dbus, in order to avoid the problem of the root partition not recognized as a mounted partition in KDE media:// protocol or hal-device manager (see the problem description above):

AND WITH:

- swsusp, in order to be able to hibernate the computer?

Again, I'm on a freshly dist-upgraded Debian unstable system, with a custom 2.6.14 kernel, with KDE 3.5.

Any idea or suggestion would be welcomed.

Marco

If you are on destop aren't you using root partion and it is therefore mounted as your pc is telling you? If you can use filemanager as root in kde menu or similar in gnome then you would be using the (mounted) root partition too.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

You're right: the root partition (i.e. /dev/hda2 in my case) is mounted, indeed. If it was not, I wouldn't be able to use the system at all! I can navigate in this partition with Konqueror or other filemanager. The problem is just that - udev and/or hal and/or dbus - are not reporting it as a mounted partition and, thus, don't le me open it with media:// protocol, hal-device-manager or, I guess, any other hal-based protocol or applications. If I try to "open" this partition with system:/media protocol, in Konqueror, I get this message:

mount: /dev/hda2 is already mounted or / is busy
mount: according to mtab /dev/hda2 in already mounted on /

If I use a initrd.img created with yaird or initramfs, I don't have this problem. The /dev/hda2 partition is reported as mounted, as it should. The only problem then is with swsusp (hibernate), which doesn't work.

Weird....

my / and /home partitions wern't showing up either but i just updated hal and everything works now.